The Gilded Age by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner

“Yes. He is not such a bad fellow. One of the men in Third street asked

him the other day, whether his was a high church or a low church? Bigler

said he didn’t know; he’d been in it once, and he could touch the ceiling

in the side aisle with his hand.”

“I think he’s just horrid,” was Ruth’s final summary of him, after the

manner of the swift judgment of women, with no consideration of the

extenuating circumstances. Mr. Bigler had no idea that he had not made a

good impression on the whole family; he certainly intended to be

agreeable. Margaret agreed with her daughter, and though she never said

anything to such people, she was grateful to Ruth for sticking at least

one pin into him.

Such was the serenity of the Bolton household that a stranger in it would

never have suspected there was any opposition to Ruth’s going to the

Medical School. And she went quietly to take her residence in town, and

began her attendance of the lectures, as if it were the most natural

thing in the world. She did not heed, if she heard, the busy and

wondering gossip of relations and acquaintances, gossip that has no less

currency among the Friends than elsewhere because it is whispered slyly

and creeps about in an undertone.

Ruth was absorbed, and for the first time in her life thoroughly happy;

happy in the freedom of her life, and in the keen enjoyment of the

investigation that broadened its field day by day. She was in high

spirits when she came home to spend First Days; the house was full of her

gaiety and her merry laugh, and the children wished that Ruth would never

go away again. But her mother noticed, with a little anxiety, the

sometimes flushed face, and the sign of an eager spirit in the kindling

eyes, and, as well, the serious air of determination and endurance in her

face at unguarded moments.

The college was a small one and it sustained itself not without

difficulty in this city, which is so conservative, and is yet the origin

of so many radical movements. There were not more than a dozen

attendants on the lectures all together, so that the enterprise had the

air of an experiment, and the fascination of pioneering for those engaged

in it. There was one woman physician driving about town in her carriage,

attacking the most violent diseases in all quarters with persistent

courage, like a modern Bellona in her war chariot, who was popularly

supposed to gather in fees to the amount ten to twenty thousand dollars a

year. Perhaps some of these students looked forward to the near day when

they would support such a practice and a husband besides, but it is

unknown that any of them ever went further than practice in hospitals and

in their own nurseries, and it is feared that some of them were quite as

ready as their sisters, in emergencies, to “call a man.”

If Ruth had any exaggerated expectations of a professional life, she kept

them to herself, and was known to her fellows of the class simply as a

cheerful, sincere student, eager in her investigations, and never

impatient at anything, except an insinuation that women had not as much

mental capacity for science as men.

“They really say,” said one young Quaker sprig to another youth of his

age, “that Ruth Bolton is really going to be a saw-bones, attends

lectures, cuts up bodies, and all that. She’s cool enough for a surgeon,

anyway.” He spoke feelingly, for he had very likely been weighed in

Ruth’s calm eyes sometime, and thoroughly scared by the little laugh that

accompanied a puzzling reply to one of his conversational nothings. Such

young gentlemen, at this time, did not come very distinctly into Ruth’s

horizon, except as amusing circumstances.

About the details of her student life, Ruth said very little to her

friends, but they had reason to know, afterwards, that it required all

her nerve and the almost complete exhaustion of her physical strength,

to carry her through. She began her anatomical practice upon detached

portions of the human frame, which were brought into the demonstrating

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *